Beta Battle: MechWarrior Online vs Hawken

For whatever reason, the powers that be have bestowed upon us a wealth of giant robots this coming holiday season. If you’ve been waiting for some quality mech on mech action in the gaming space, you stand on the verge of several great titles coming to a variety of platforms.

If you’re of the PC gaming inclination, a couple of these titles have offered some really exciting beta programs. While it is hardly fair to judge a game by its beta, I feel like two of these titles have come far enough along to get a pretty good idea of which style of gameplay you might favor. So, I took a look at the upcoming MechWarrior Online and Hawken PC games to see which game had what I needed.

Hawken

Being the new kid in town is awesome if you’re a mech game. You can make your own world, your own rules, and your own robots. Gameplay can be as sci-fi or as fantasy as you want, and in the end no one can fault you because you’ve managed to create a game that involves blowing up robots.

Hawken puts you in a crazy dystopian future world that isn’t exactly earth. The beta allows you access to a few kinds of gameplay that make the whole title feel like a first person shooter. The game is developed using Unreal, which has proved itself may times over as an engine well-suited to the FPS-style of gameplay.

Hawken is fast paced, designed for constant movement, and seemingly constant shooting. Very much like a traditional FPS, you rush to an objective and shoot your way to the goal. Especially in “siege” mode, where the objective seems to be to siphon enough energy from the battlefield to power a massive ship that will cruise across the sky and attack the enemy base for you. If missions aren’t really your thing, you can always enjoy some good old fashioned deathmatch and fight until your mech overheats or is blown to pieces by the enemy.

Hawken’s mechs are unusual to say the least. In the mech upgrade and design stage before the beginning of each match you are offered some basic bolt on tools, which are mostly just swapping one gun out for another or changing the paint scheme on your mech. The process feels very similar to how you would choose a character in an FPS, where you pick the armor color and weapon loadout. There’s very little time spent making your mech particularly different from any of the others on the field.

If you are ready for robot smashing action that does a great job of combining the twitch-shooter skills you built up in Call of Duty with the fantasy elements of a ruined robot siege world, Hawken is exactly what you are looking for.

MechWarrior Online

I doubt that the creators of BattleTech envisioned a future in which their franchise would grow and change so many times that, nearly 30 years later, the concepts they created would be considered guidelines for massive robot combat. MechWarrior Online is the latest in the evolution of that franchise, rebooting the ancient feud between the Inner Sphere and the Clans for an MMO-style action game. The CryEngine 3-based game puts you in a team based assault match with players of every skill level during the beta. You have two choices, kill everyone on the other team or capture their base.

The whole game is based on teamwork, typically achieved through a voice chat system that is built into the game . Matchmaking will put you with total strangers, or throw you into a group of friends if you have paired up before you start a match. Once you are in the game, extra points are given for cooperative attacks like spotting an enemy mech so a teammate can light them up with missiles from a distance. As long as your mech makes it to the end of the match, you walk away with a healthy supply of experience and C-Bills.

MechWarrior Online is incredibly granular. You pay for ammunition used, armor that needs to be repaired, and every single part on your mech. You choose how many heatsinks you have, and where they go on your mech. You choose where on your mech you store your ammo, and whether or not you protect that ammo from exploding if that body part takes a hit. The end result is incredible diversity in the mechs being created, but also a steep learning curve for those who want to just jump in and play.

This is a game for serious mech pilots, ready to build the best machine possible from the ground up. If you’re looking for a game to really sink your teeth and time into, MechWarrior Online is for you.

Final Thoughts

I was surprised to find that I thoroughly enjoyed both of these games. Hawken is absolutely a faster-paced and far more energetic experience than MechWarrior Online, but lacks the kind of detail and team oriented gameplay that I have enjoyed in the mech games of the past. MWO’s free-to-play MMO style of gameplay will lure a lot of gamers in, but the learning curve for actually enjoying the game is so much larger than Hawken’s that it’s easy to see some gamers passing over the reboot for something more exciting.

In the end, I felt that MechWarrior Online was the better beta experience. Hawken has a lot of potential to be a great game, but I feel like the experience will become repetitive very quickly, while MWO will provide a lot of variety and a ton of customization to kep players coming back for more.

Speak Your Mind

I’ve played BattleTech recently and I played the old MechWarrior for DOS way back in the day. I’ve got to say that piloting Mechs has always been cool.

SirKoes

being a mech fan in general, I found Hawken is lack of ‘mech feeling’

Hawken feels like you’re in an armor with jumpjets and thrusters, not in a giant behemoth.

erwte

On the other hand mechwarrior looks to be alot more expensive if you want to build a decent mech.

If you feel too light in hawken, build a heavy

FAASSDF

Wow dude, your comments on MWO made me think you haven’t played the game for more than 5 minutes. You make it sound like you build your mech piece by piece, which at this point isn’t even remotely true

http://www.facebook.com/jacques.bettencourt Jacques Bettencourt

MWO = a BattleTech World of Tanks (more for the better than worse, fortunately) while Hawken really is an arcade-style Mobile Suite Gundam shooter. And while those franchises are essentially two sides of the same coin (Corporation-future/Mech-wars), the games themselves offer VASTLY different experiences from one another. NDA has not lifted yet for Hawken so I’m not @ liberty to disclose more but I’ll just say this: BOTH will find an audience and carve out a niche market but Hawken has, regrettably, out of the gate, volunteered to fight an uphill battle toward breakout success.

some_guy_said

Just started playing MWO on intel HD4000 integrated graphics. It gets 24-30 FPS if you play at the lowest settings and resolution, no Antialiasing.

lol. Going out to get a gtx 680 tonight.

some_guy_said

If you BUY your mech, you can change everything except the tonnage, look, or space of the mech. Everything else CAN be changed.

And that’s with a game that is like 30% complete…

Mikee

No need to jump to a 680 immediately, I’m running a GTX 560 and getting 70fps with graphics turned up as high as they’ll go.

Mikee

Kinda, sorta.. mechs are limited to certain weapon types based upon their hardpoints, but FAASSDF is right, you’re not building a mech piece by piece.. you buy them whole and then swap out pieces as you see fit.

Mikee

Uh.. no, you don’t have to spend anything to get a decent mech in MWO, the game is free2play, you don’t have to spend any real world currency on it. Nearly every mech is available to everyone, free or paying.

some_guy_said

Yes, but i think that FAASSDF took the tone of the article out of context – While you don’t design or build the mech from the ground up, you can tinker with almost anything under the hood.

some_guy_said

I did get the 680. And it is wonderful. I did all my other upgrades 3 months ago (New motherboard, processor, ssd, etc) and I just wanted to wait off on the vid card until I had a need for it. (Which turns out to be mechwarrior)

I expect if you look, there’s actually a higher graphics setting (ultra high or very high) above what you have it set at. I’m not positive what my max framerate is. It bounces between 45 in heavy battle and 60 – But I have V-sync – Which limits it to 60fps (Monitor set to 60Hz) max (I hate hate hate tearing.) I’ll give it a run w/out vsync and see what kind of frame rate it can actually push.

I have various reasons for getting the 680 – power envelope, noise level (I have an extremely quiet air cooled power machine) and the fact that it will be 3-6 years before I plan to upgrade any components.

some_guy_said

With no Vsync, i get around 100-120 fps at the high end :).

If you see a cicada taunting ppl to shoot at him, that’s me. Screen Name Nirilus. I’m the guy who draws all the fire while the heavies move into position.

But with 10 million cbills in modifications, it’s a cicada that you choose to ignore at your own peril. I’ve taken down multiple atlases with it.

some_guy_said

The heaviest mech available is available from day one as a “trial mech”. Most new people stick to the heaviest (Atlas) until they have enough game currency to buy their own.

And it cost free ninety nine to get game currency if you go out and battle. There is no need to pay.